


Lullaby for the Fallen

by AlyaRayne



Series: The Legend of El Mahariel [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Awkward cuddles, Canonical Character Death, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, F/F, M/M, Talk of Character Death, bffs being there for each other, bonding over lost loves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 11:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyaRayne/pseuds/AlyaRayne
Summary: “Nice night, isn't it?” asked El by way of announcing her presence. The man jumped, his head whipping around to see who had spoken. His eyes glowed blue in the darkness, but El was hardly concerned. In the two weeks since they had found Anders in that small village Justice had only surfaced a handful of times, and El knew that he posed her no threat. “Sorry for startling you.”The blue faded quickly, leaving only Anders. “It's no trouble,” he said, turning back to face the fire. “Nightmares?”“Not at all. I just find that sleeping soundly is far too boring and normal. I've decided to stay awake at all times until I slip into madness.” she replied, stepping over the log Anders was sitting on so she could join him. It was warmer here, and it helped chase away the chill of the darkspawn.“It is a tempting notion,” said Anders, a hint of humor in his tired voice. “We could set a new trend in Orlais.”(Grey Warden El Mahariel and wanted apostate Anders bond over lost loves in front of the fire.)





	Lullaby for the Fallen

Having nightmares that made her wake, shaking and slick with sweat, was hardly a novelty. It had been a decade since she'd become a Warden after all, and heart-pounding panic while sleeping was only one of the amazing side effects.

Fighting the shaking in her limbs El pushed herself up, shoving her damp hair out of her face. With no Archdemon, the dreams were far less horrible than they could be, she knew that first hand, but they would never be pleasant. She focused on regulating her breathing, looking around the darkened interior of her tent. She could see faint shadows of things; her lantern at the entrance, her blankets bunched off to the side, her journal half tucked back in her bags. What she didn't see, however, was her tent mate.

With a sigh El shifted to her knees, grabbing her dagger harness because she trusted nothing and her cloak so she wouldn't freeze in the night air. She slipped the former over her shoulders and pulled the latter tight around herself before making her way out of the tent. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the light from the fire. In front of it sat the person El had been looking for, clearly lost in thought as he stared into the flames.

“Nice night, isn't it?” asked El by way of announcing her presence. The man jumped, his head whipping around to see who had spoken. His eyes glowed blue in the darkness, but El was hardly concerned. In the two weeks since they had found Anders in that small village Justice had only surfaced a handful of times, and El knew that he posed her no threat. “Sorry for startling you.”

The blue faded quickly, leaving only Anders. “It's no trouble,” he said, turning back to face the fire. “Nightmares?”

“Not at all. I just find that sleeping soundly is far too boring and normal. I've decided to stay awake at all times until I slip into madness.” she replied, stepping over the log Anders was sitting on so she could join him. It was warmer here, and it helped chase away the chill of the darkspawn.

“It is a tempting notion,” said Anders, a hint of humor in his tired voice. “We could set a new trend in Orlais.”

“They're mad enough as it is.” Anders let out a huff of laughter at this, shaking his head, his messy hair glinting in the firelight. “So, I'm guessing you relieved Nathaniel of his watch?”

“Some of us might as well sleep, and it wasn't going to be me anyway,” he answered. She nodded in understanding. Of their little group, only Zevran was spared from dreams of discordant songs and mindless hunger, but despite this, he had his own reasons for sleepless nights. It was a merry bunch of walking corpses they made most days. Thank the creators for Grey Warden stamina, or El would have never made it out of camp. Also, thank the creators for Antivan coffee, and Zevran's ability to brew it perfectly.

There was a pause, a space filled with the sounds of crickets and the rustling of small animals in the bushes. Then, Anders was speaking again, softly enough that El's ears twitched towards him to hear better. She knew a human wouldn't have been able to tell what he was saying.

“It wasn't just the 'spawn I dreamt of.” he said, curling in on himself, all traces of humor gone. He was like that a lot now, joking one minute and then deadly serious the next. She waited, silent, letting him talk when he was ready. “I had a...friend in Kinloch Hold. Karl was his name. I...dream of him sometimes. If you can call them dreams. He...died in Kirkwall you see.” he paused again, rubbing his hands together. “The Circle had made him Tranquil, all because of sending letters to me. When I went to get him and found out what they had done, Justice came forward and killed the Templars that were sent there to catch me. It brought Karl back, but only long enough for him to ask me to...beg me to...to ki-” he broke off with a gasp and El could see that his knuckles were white from how hard his hands were squeezed around each other. Faint cracks of blue light spider-webbed over his skin, dim next to the flames.

She rested her own hand on his, gently smoothing over the roughened skin with her calloused thumb. He tensed for a second, but then relaxed into her, almost swaying towards her, the cracks vanishing as quickly as they had come. She wrapped her free arm around him, small though it was compared to him, even as malnourished as he was. Even so, he still leaned closer. Resting on her for comfort he hadn't had in far too long.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn't mean to burden you with that.” His voice was tight, his throat constricted with tears. She pulled him closer.

“I want you to share your burdens, Anders. Too much carried alone will break you.” El answered, smiling softly when he released his own hand to link fingers with her.

“What if there was a cure? What if I could have helped him, instead of-”

“No, Anders. You can't do that to yourself,” she said softly, shifting so he could rest his head on her shoulder. It had to be a bit uncomfortable for him to bend like that, but he didn't seem to mind. “You did the best you could with what you knew. You saved your friend from a life half lived. It's easy to hate yourself for killing someone you love, but you have to remember that it was what they wanted. You saved them, even though it hurt.”

“You sound as if you speak from experience,” he said, more a mumble that actual words. For just a second, El could see blonde hair in the dance of that fire. Hear a laugh that she had not heard in a long time. She shut her eyes.

“When I was still with my clan, there was this...man.” she paused, wondering if she was really going to tell Anders. She had only ever really talked about this with her former companions during the blight, and even then, only after the...incident. Taking a deep breath, she pushed on. “Tamlen, he was called. A hunter like me. We grew up together, learned everything together. We were going to spend our lives together; planned to have the Keeper perform the bonding rites.” She stopped, her eyes prickling with the start of tears. She blinked them away as Anders wrapped an arm around her waist, squeezing gently. “One day, while we were out hunting we came across a group of _she_ -of humans. They were running, terrified of a demon they said was in an old ruin. The idiots that we were, we decided to investigate. In that ruin, we found darkspawn, and an old mirror. When Tamlen touched it there was this...blast of energy that knocked us backward. I woke three days later at camp.”

After a moment of silence, a moment where El considered just leaving it there, Anders asked, “This mirror, was it Merrill's eluvian?”

“The very same, it seems,” she confirmed with a slight nod, but her mind was hardly on the old mirror itself. “I thought he'd died there. I blamed myself for letting him touch it in the first place, and I blamed Duncan for not searching harder for his body, but in the end, it was Tamlen's choice, and I could never have stopped him.”

She sighed, resting her head on top of Anders'. The ache in her heart was less than it used to be, but it still hurt when she thought about this. Even so, she continued, “Six months after I became a Warden the camp was woken by Shrieks, the darkspawn, not just the sound. They had found us because the Archdemon had seen Alistair and me in our dreams. With them was a ghoul. I didn't recognize him at first, not with the grey skin and no hair, but once I did I realized that despite my efforts, Tamlen had found me instead.”

Anders sucked in a breath, his arm tightening around her, and the lump she was feeling in her throat grew. “Once he saw me, he seemed to snap out of the Archdemon's control. He called out to me, begged me to kill him before he could hurt me.” El drew in a shuddering breath, closing her eyes against the tears that were threatening to fall now. Ten years, and she could still feel a knife twist in her heart when she thought of that moment.

“What did you do?” asked Anders softly, as if he wasn't quite intending to speak.

“I hugged him, one last time, and told him how much I loved him. Then I plunged my dagger into his heart.” As she said it, she could see it. His face going slack with relief, the blood staining both the rags he wore and her tunic. She could hear the soft gasp of acceptance, could feel his fever hot fingers against her face.

“That's what I did. With Karl,” said Anders. “Told him how much I loved him, how sorry I was. I wanted him to know that I would never forget him.” She could feel his tears drip onto her shoulder and soak into her clothes. “They never gave him a funeral. Just burned him and stuffed his ashes away somewhere where they didn't need to think about it. As if he was nothing more than an inconvenience.”

“My clan held a funeral for Tamlen, but I gave him another one after I-” she swallowed, “after. If you want, we could do the same for Karl.”

“You would do that, even though he wasn't Dalish?” asked Anders, shifting a little against her.

“Yes I would, though I'm no _hahren_.” said El, rubbing Anders' shoulder. “I don't know anything about a Chantry funeral, but I can do a Dalish one well enough.”

“I'm sure he would be honored,” Anders muttered, his voice cracking. “You are, as ever, a wonderful friend.” This made El smile a little, and she pressed a kiss to his greying blonde hair.

“We would need to find a sapling, and usually we either bury the dead or something of theirs. For Karl though, you can use something that reminded you of him. Then we bury that with an oak branch, and plant a sapling over it, to mark the spot.” she explained, remembering the night she had scoured the woods for Tamlen's tree, nearly losing herself to the forest and the tears in her eyes. She had been so close to giving up then, had lost everything she had ever cared for, but she had pushed on. Now, she had much to live for, but Tamlen would always be a part of her soul, and she would always miss him.

“Is that what you did for Tamlen?” asked Anders, slipping his hand out of hers to wipe his tears.

“Not completely.” she said, “He was blighted, so we had to burn him. I buried his clan amulet and the wooden ring he had carved for me. It was for our bonding, a promise ring, but without him, I couldn't look at it without wanting to scream. I told him,” she broke off, voice cracking, and she had to clear her throat to continue, “I told him to watch over it until we met again.”

“I have an old handkerchief of Karl's,” said Anders after a moment, his thumb rubbing soothing circles into her side. “He gave it to me when he found me crying one day in the tower library. I meant to give it back, but they shipped him to Kirkwall before I could. I've kept it with me since then, to remind myself of the good times we shared.”

“That would work well,” said El, clearing her throat again. “But are you willing to part with it?”

“I think I might be.” said Anders, “I kept it to remind me of good times, but I don't think it does anymore. Now, it only reminds how I failed him.” his voice shook, but he took a deep breath and continued, “How do you live with it? Feeling that they died because of you?”

“I just have to remember that life goes on, and that Tamlen wouldn't want me to blame myself. Leliana helped a lot to, taught me how to see the light beyond the darkness. _Hamin felas melana vir tel’sulevin tu’then tarasyl sa’vunin’ena mahvir garas._ ” She didn't sing it as Leliana would; merely spoke the words for they were not a song to her, but a reminder.

“What does that mean?” Anders asked, “I don't know much elven.”

“ _The night is long and the path is dark, look to the sky for one day soon the dawn will come._ ” she translated, once again saying the line like poetry, and not a song. “As much as I hate the Chantry, that song always spoke to me. Leliana helped me translate it so I wouldn't feel as if I was betraying my people.” Anders huffed out a watery laugh.

“Only you would make a Chantry song Dalish with the help of the Left Hand of the Divine,” he said, shaking his head. She was happy to hear that his voice sounded less hollow.

“Well, she wasn't the Left Hand and the time. Merely a lay sister.” El corrected with a small smile of her own.

“Thank you for talking to me about this.” he said, “It can't have been easy, and I can't say that I feel better about what happened, but it helps to know that you understand.”

"I'm happy to help my friends through their troubles,” said El, wiping away the few tears that had slipped through. “It seems to be half of my job as a Warden.”

“It's because you have a good heart,” he said, pulling away now with a slight groan. She wondered if he had injured his back bending like that for so long.

“Shh, don't tell everyone. I'll lose my status as a badass,” she said, rolling her shoulders to ward of a cramp in the one that had been injured in Denerim.

“I don't think that will ever happen,” answered Anders, laughing softly. After a moment he sobered again. “If you would, come sunrise, I would like to look for that sapling.”

El nodded, brushing her hair out of her face. “Of course. After all, it's important to pick the right one. You want it to grow for centuries.”

“I want something big and strong, just like he was. Maybe an oak?”

“That sounds perfect,” said El, pulling her cloak tighter around her, colder now that Anders had moved away. She could hear the birds beginning to tweet, and she knew that dawn wasn't far away. Already there was a slight lightening on the horizon.

A second later, Anders was pressing a soft kiss to her lips. “Thank you, El. For everything you are.”

She smiled, glad to see him a least a little happier. “And to you, _lethal'lin_.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, first things first; Hello darlings!! It's been an age since I last posted, but that's not unusual for me. Thankfully the muse has once again whacked me with the skillet of writing, so now I have this sappy mess of feels for all of you to enjoy. Or hate me for, whichever works for you...XD
> 
> The Elven version of The Dawn Will Come was by http://archiveofourown.org/users/FadeKiss/pseuds/FadeKiss. The full thing is here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3839719. It's really amazing. 
> 
> I am on the tumblrs! If you wish to shriek (the noise, not the darkspwan) at me feel free. You can find me at: http://alyarayne.tumblr.com/
> 
> Pics of my Warden are coming soon to a theatre near you, but I haven't quite got them ready yet, sadly. More stories soon, hopefully, but my brain is a wretched place that never wants to work with me. Also, on a side note, the title comes from Lullaby for a Soldier by Maggie Siff (sort of) which I listened to on repeat for five hours. I have no soul left, but it did its job and kept me in the zone. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the trip down feels lane! Much love to all of you!


End file.
